COVID-19, scarce health resources allocation and standard view of disability: On the Colombian constitutional court’s judgement T-237 of 2023

Judgement T-237/23 of the Constitutional Court of Colombia responds to a tutela petition filed by a group of 26 people over the age of 60, disabled and/or chronically ill, against the Colombian Ministry of Health and Social Protection. It identifies the lack of binding recommendations on triage by the Ministry, which enabled, among other things, the development and use of a set of triage criteria that are suspected to undermine the rights of certain populations. This article aims to link the contested triage criteria to the so-called ‘standard view of disability’ to show the ethical and epistemic problems of establishing prioritisation or tie-breaker criteria for the scarce health resources allocation based on scores related to a person’s quality of life or ‘functional independence’. To do so, I will focus on the ethical recommendations elaborated by Grupo Intensivistas Antioquia and the Mayor’s Office of Medellín that have been challenged in the tutela petition and the third section of Judgement T-237/23.